Building the Fortress

One of the many outdoor projects we have going on right now is building a retainer wall around the front of the house. When we moved in there were a couple gigantic, overgrown bushes right outside our front door, and Tony and I couldn’t get rid of them fast enough. In the picture below you can see how overgrown everything was, but the bushes I’m referring to are the ones on the right.

Tony got all the bushes pulled out last fall, but it got cold pretty quickly and all worked stopped…until this past weekend that is.

Here are some progression shots.

As you can see, the bushes on the right and left side of the door have been removed. The dark green one in the middle on the left side of the photo is still there, but it’s just dormant right now so you can’t really see it in the bottom picture. I think it’s some kind of Japanese maple, but I’m not sure. We were having some water leak into the basement from the spout pouring straight down the wall of the house, so as you can see, we added a rain barrel to the front garden area. It kind of looks like a terracotta pot, and we can add flowers to the top of it to make it look a little nicer…and I think I’ll probably put some Pansy’s in there this weekend. We also removed the black screen door, and I’m much happier with it just being white, but I really need to patch the holes that were left and paint it.

Here is the retaining wall (fortress) from the front and side views:

You can just barely see that little stick like thing in the center of the rounded part, but that is a Yoshino Flowering Cherry tree that we picked up at Lowes this weekend. It’s just a baby, but I’m hoping it will grow to be like the one we left at our old house.

Here’s what they look like when they are grown and blooming in the spring:

So, so pretty! I’m hoping the weather is going to be nice this weekend so that we can get that wall finished. It’s so much work, but I think we are almost there and then the real fun begins! Planting flowers!